The Amazing Psychic Wankery of Max Boot

Max Boot must be a clairvoyant. Or so he claims in his most recent LA Times outing:

But with his investigation all but over, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has found no criminal conspiracy and no violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a crime in some circumstances to disclose the names of undercover CIA operatives.

Okay don’t get hinky on me, Max, I know how sensitive you astral projection and colonic irrigation types can be. Over here — we’re gonna go a little left-hemisphere for a moment but don’t worry, it won’t hurt you — we have a few facts.

I know, I know, Patrick Fitzgerald said in his Friday press conference that his investigation is by and large over. But Patrick Fitzgerald has said all along that his investigation has been over for a year. WaPo from April, 2005:

In the court documents, Fitzgerald said that by October 2004, "the factual investigation — other than the testimony of Miller and Cooper . . . was for all practical purposes complete."

Ask around, Max. Talk to anyone who covers this thing, or has been caught in its wake. Fitzgerald doesn’t need to investigate shit at this point. What he needs to do is prove his case. Oh he may dance around and send a few FBI agents out to fact check Rover’s cock-and-bull stories, but that’s just window dressing. Fitzgerald knows what happens, he’s known for a long time. The two year stretch hasn’t been about figuring out what happened, it’s about getting the people who know and will make reliable witnesses to tell him the truth.

But maybe I sell Max short. Perhaps his clairvoyant skills are better than I assume. Did he stick his hand in the hermetically sealed mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnalls’ porch to learn that Fitzgerald has found no criminal conspiracy and no violation of the IIPA?

Is that your secret source, Max? Or are you privy to the details of Fitzgerald’s investigation that we are not? ‘Cos the rest of us are on the outside thinking that just because something isn’t charged doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And in your previous Penthouse Forum fantasies of a world filled with white men in shiny back jackboots, I think you’ve lamented as much.

Among other problems, Plame doesn’t seem to fit the act’s definition of a "covert agent" someone who "has within the last five years served outside the United States."

Again, Max has apparently been gazing into his own crystal balls. If only he’d hipped us two years ago to amazing psychic gifts, he could’ve spared us the embarrassing faux pas of the CIA, who seemed to think that a crime was committed when they asked the Justice Department to look into it in September of 2003. And the Justice Department seemed to think that something had gone afoul when they appointed a Special Counsel in December of 2003. But the all-seeing Boot Boy clearly knows much more than those he accuses of being a bunch of wanky time-wasters.

Well I suppose everyone has to be an expert on something

The rest of the article is spent bashing Joe Wilson. Young Max might better devote his skills to resolving the theory of relativity with quantum physics because his Madam Blavatsky act is going to have a right hard time getting around the fact that ultimately Joe Wilson was fucking right.

Of course, I could be wrong in all of this. Larry Johnson seems to think that Max doesn’t have any balls, crystal or otherwise, and is simply swapping pills with Big Pharma. From his post entitled Is Max Boot Using OxyContin:

[W]hy can’t conservative talkers and bloggers accept the fact that Valerie Plame was undercover until exposed in Bob Novak’s column? Patrick Fitzgerald spoke in English and did not stutter when he said very clearly at the start of his press conference last Friday, Valerie Wilson’s cover was blown." You can only blow a cover if a cover exists.

I guess I may be trying to over-complicate things needlessly. Larry’s probably right, they’re all just on drugs.

Jane Hamsher

Jane is the founder of Firedoglake.com. Her work has also appeared on the Huffington Post, Alternet and The American Prospect. She’s the author of the best selling book Killer Instinct and has produced such films Natural Born Killers and Permanent Midnight. She lives in Washington DC.Subscribe in a reader